CLP may list in India to expand business

Beijing: Hong Kong’s biggest electricity supplier, CLP Holdings Ltd, may hold an initial public offering (IPO) for its Indian operations to expand the business.

“We are always reviewing various options to expand our business and IPO is only one of the options to take our India business forward,” public affairs manager Winifred Wong said in emailed comments on Monday. “We have no specific plan or timeline at this stage,” she said, without providing further details.

The utility has expanded into China, Australia, India and South-East Asia to counter slowing growth in Hong Kong.

Its biggest investment in India, a $1.2 billion (Rs5,784 crore) coal-fired power plant at Jhajjar in Haryana, may start generating electricity by December 2011, Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, managing director of CLP’s Indian unit, said in January. The firm will also seek opportunities to invest in other Indian projects to increase the scale of its operations.